Recently someone raised the following question: “I just wanted to write you about Strong’s concordance. To my understanding, you as well as many other baptists have used Strong’s concordance with great benefit, while other baptists often condemn it. I’m in no way trying to bash you or other baptists for using it, I simply want to know the truth, and your personal opinion on these several presumably disturbing facts.

“According to my The New Strong’s Expanded Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, a 2010 copy of the concordance, entry number 1966 Hebrew is hay-lale` or Lucifer. The definition reads ‘the morning star.’ This seems erroneous and even blasphemous in light of Revelation 22:16, which clearly confirms that Jesus is the morning star.

“Furthermore, I’ve read and heard that James Strong believed in infant baptism, was on the Revised Version committee, and contributed to the A.S.V. in 1901. If this is true, then he likely must have worked with heretics Westcott and Hort.

“These views are in the public domain, and advocated by Dr. David Baker of Independent Baptist Online College and Gail Riplinger (whom I understand you don’t recommend).

“Again, I don’t want to bash baptists that use Strong’s concordance, but am simply wondering how they can continue to use it in light of these accusations and claims, and am wondering if there is any better reliable source to understanding the true Hebrew and Greek meanings of Bible words without going directly to someone with that knowledge.”

REPLY FROM BROTHER CLOUDI have used Strong’s Concordance with great benefit for 43 years. The man who led me to Christ bought me a King James Bible and a Strong’s, and that is what I had in starting out my Bible study career. I wore out that copy of Strong’s the first year I was saved even before I went off to Bible college. I continue to use it every day.

There is no perfect Bible study tool, in my knowledge, and I have looked high and low. I know that my own Way of Life Encyclopedia of the Bible & Christianity is not perfect, because I have continued to find mistakes ever since it was first published in 1993, and not just typos.

But the few defects of Strong’s Concordance are far outweighed by its great value, in my estimation. In fact, I am convinced that it is the most important Bible study tool ever made.

If you require a perfect Bible study tool, I wish you well in that venture. Perhaps Mrs. Riplinger will produce a perfect exhaustive concordance of the English language with Hebrew and Greek word studies that real Bible believers can use with utter confidence.

As for James Strong (1822-1916), he might have contributed to the ASV, I am not sure. If he did, he was wrong on that. I do know that he was a conservative Methodist and at two Bible colleges, he defended biblical inspiration against the onslaught of theological modernism.

As for infant baptism, since Strong was a Methodist, he probably did hold to that heresy. If you believe that you shouldn’t use any work done by a man who holds to infant baptism, you will need to reject the King James Bible, because all of its translators held to that.

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